Annie Gordon, Flute Megan Kyle, Oboe Lin Ma, Clarinet

Contemporary Music Ensemble Timothy Weiss, conductor Rand Steiger, composer-in-residence

Friday Jesse Yukimura, viola May 13, 2011, 8:00 pm Warner Concert Hall Daniel Walden, piano Concert No. 407 Christian Streit Smith, percussion

A Menacing Plume (2011) Rand Steiger (b. 1957)

Annie Gordon, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Lin Ma, clarinet Kevin Scollo, Isaac Fernández Hernández, vibraphone Eugene Kim, piano Marina Kifferstein, violin Carrie Frey, viola Eric Tinkerhess, cello

“Es ist genug” Variations on a Theme by Bach (1986) Edison Denisov (1929–1996)

Jesse Yukimura, viola

Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Eugene Kim, celesta Lisha Gu, Maya Bennardo, violin Lianna Dugan, viola Xochi John, cello Zachary Hobin, bass

Intermission Double Concerto (1985) Steiger

Daniel Walden, piano Christian Smith, percussion

Orchestra I Laura Cocks, flute Megan Kyle, oboe Dustin Chung, clarinet William Eisenberg, horn Jacob Flaschen, trumpet Zachary Guiles, trombone Ran Duan, synthesizer Shelly Du, harp Kevin Dee, guitar Marina Kifferstein, Jing Qiao, Lisa Goddard, Lauren Manning, violin Lianna Dugan, Carrie Frey, viola David Ellis, Dylan Messina, cello Will Robbins, bass

Orchestra II Annie Gordon, flute Ian Copeland, clarinet Ryan Wilkins, bassoon Valerie Sly, horn Aaron Plourde, trumpet Caitlin Roseum, trombone Brendan Shea, Holly Jenkins, Lisha Gu, Maya Bennardo, violin Jane Mitchell, Jesse Yukimura, viola Mary Auner, Eric Tinkerhess, cello Adam Bernstein, bass

Andrew Ralston, David Ellis, student managers Michael Roest, Phil Parsons, ensemble manager & librarian

Please silence all cell phones and refrain from the use of video cameras unless prior arrangements have been made with the conductor. The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you. Biographies

Composer Rand Steiger was born in New York City in 1957. His compositions have been performed and commissioned by many leading ensembles and organizations, including the American Composers Orchestra, Ircam, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Southbank Sinfonia, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Composer Fellow from 1987 through 1989. His compositions and performances are recorded on the Centaur, CRI, Crystal, Einstein, EMF, Koch, Mode, New Albion, New Dynamic, New World, and Nonesuch labels. Steiger's recent compositions explore a hybrid approach to just and equal- tempered tuning. Throughout his career he has also been deeply involved in computer music research, and many of his works combine orchestral instruments with real-time digital audio signal processing and spatialization. These works have included: Ecosphere for large chamber ensemble, developed during residencies at Ircam and premiered by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Résonateur, composed for the Ensemble Sospeso to commemorate the 80th birthday of Pierre Boulez; and Traversing, written for cellist Mathew Barley and the Southbank Sinfonia. More recently, Cryosphere, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York, and was described as "achingly lovely" by Steven Smith writing in the New York Times. Steiger is also active as a conductor specializing in contemporary works. He has conducted the Arditti Quartet, Aspen Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Sospeso, La Jolla Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, New York New Music Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain (Switzerland), and the California EAR Unit, of which he was the founding artistic director. Among his recordings as conductor are operas by Hilda Paredes and Anthony Davis, and works by Carter, LeBaron, Osborn, Reynolds, Stockhausen, Subotnick, Xenakis, and Wadada Leo Smith. He has also conducted many premieres, including works of Andriessen, Babbitt, Boulez, Carter, Ferneyhough, Harvey, Kernis, Newton, Nono, Reynolds, Riley, Rudders, Rzewski, Saariaho, Scelsi, Subotnick, Takemitsu, Tavener, and Tuur. Steiger was on the Faculty of California Institute of the Arts from 1982 through 1987, and was a Visiting Professor at Harvard in 2009. Currently he is a professor in the Music Department at the University of California, San Diego, and is the Composer-in-Residence of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Jesse Yukimura is a fifth-year double degree student at Oberlin, majoring in viola performance and chemistry. Jesse grew up near Seattle, Washington, and started playing the viola at age nine. Since then, he has participated in orchestral programs that have brought him to concert halls across the country, from Benaroya to Disney to Carnegie, as well as across the Pacific to China and Singapore. Jesse has participated in summer programs at Idyllwild, Colorado College, and Kneisel Hall, and performed under the batons of Christian Knapp, Larry Livingston, Robert Spano, and David Zinman. Jesse has been coached by such prominent musicians as Helen Callus, Robert Koenig, Desmond Hoebig, Lucy Chapman, Mark Sokol, Ron Copes, Joel Krosnick, and members of the Tokyo String Quartet. Jesse has served as Principal Violist in both Oberlin Orchestra and Oberlin Chamber Orchestra, as well as at the Symphony and Opera Academy of the Pacific, and has participated in the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble for four semesters. Jesse is a student of Professor Peter Slowik, and will be continuing his studies in music this fall at Lynn University with Professor Ralph Fielding. Daniel Walden is a double-degree student in piano performance and Classics. A student of Peter Takacs, he is an avid performer of contemporary music and Classical repertoire on historical instruments. Daniel is a member of the Contemporary Music Ensemble and has also performed with the Oberlin Wind Ensemble and Oberlin Percussion Group. He organized and performed in the recent “1-Bit Project” with Ryan Packard and Georgia Horn, supported by the Oberlin Creativity Fund and MetLife Composers Today, presenting the compositions and visual art of Tristan Perich at Oberlin and Spaces Gallery in Cleveland. He was selected in 2008 as Artist- in-Residence Fellow in 20th and 21st Century Music with the Cleveland Symphony, studying with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and performing in Severance Hall. In summers, he has attended festivals including Aspen, Banff Piano Master classes, Norfolk New Music Workshop, Bang on a Can, and SICPP, working closely with faculty including Ann Schein, Jerome Lowenthal, Lisa Moore, Stephen Drury, and Vicky Ray, and with composers including Jonathan Harvey, David Lang, and Martin Bresnick. Daniel was a featured performer on NPR’s From the Top, performing at the Ravinia Festival and at Herbst Hall in San Francisco.

Christian Streit Smith started playing percussion in the Copenhagen International School in 2000 while his family lived in Denmark. Since 2001 he has studied with David Fishlock, Allen Otte, Michael Rosen, and Matthew Duvall. He has attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and MusicX (08’ and 10’). He was a winner of the Blue Ash Symphony Concerto Competition in 2008, and he has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra as soloist at a series of Young People's Concerts. In the past year he put together a performance of Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union, and worked with Oberlin’s Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) professor Tom Lopez to perform his piece sfound objects: Thirteen Drums. Christian also collaborated with TIMARA student David Bird to produce Vows – which they have performed at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), and he prepared the piece Nasenflugeltanz by Karlheinz Stockhausen for synthesizers and singing percussion soloist, in which Danny Walden performed the keyboard part. During October, Christian performed with Oberlin’s bonne action led by Oberlin composition professor Lewis Nielson, and at the end of February the same group travelled to University of Central Arkansas and Arkansas State University. At the end of March he performed with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in the Fromm Players Concert Series at Harvard. Christian is interested in improvised performance, and has participated in OINC (Oberlin Improvised and New Music Collective) for two years. He is a member of the SCIensemble which performs works by Oberlin student composers each semester chosen by the group in coordination with Oberlin’s SCI (Society of Composers, Inc.) chapter. This summer Christian will attend SICPP (Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice) and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Christian is in his third year at Oberlin College where he studies with Michael Rosen. Program Notes A Menacing Plume (2011) From the moment I read about the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform (April 20, 2010), I was filled with a sense of dread. I thought immediately of the strange, unworldly creatures that thrive in the ocean's depths, as well as those that swim near the surface or fly above it. My feeling of horror grew as we read day after day of the massive, uninhibited flow of oil from the sea floor, and the unregulated use of chemical dispersants (which we now know will linger longer than the oil itself, with as yet unknown consequences.) After a few weeks, news reports described huge plumes of oil gathering in the gulf and drifting out into the Atlantic Ocean. It was impossible to know how large these were or how deadly they would be, but that image of a menacing plume, obliterating life in its wake, stayed with me. Although in many of my earlier works I have reflected on the natural world, I have never before attempted so directly, almost literally, to narrate something like this event in musical terms. My piece begins with an image of the vast undisturbed surface of the sea as the blinding, bright morning light first arises, followed by a flock of seabirds that soar above. Then layers of material emerge though all the instruments, inspired by the diversity and complexity of undersea life. Finally, an ominous darkness enters and ultimately squeezes out all life. In addition to the conventional instruments on stage, you will hear two vibraphones with specially tuned bars that enable just intonation. We will also be deploying digital signal processing to transform the sound of the instruments in a variety of ways (just-tuned harmonizing, delays, filters, etc.) I would like to thank Talea, and Miller Puckette for their inspiring collaboration. I dedicate this performance to the memory of my friend, the composer Arthur Jarvinen, who recently passed away at the untimely age of 54.

“Es ist genug” Variations on a Theme by Bach (1984) by Edison Denisov (Tomsk, Russia, 1929 – Paris, France, 1996) This work is an homage not only to Bach, whose harmonization of the chorale ‟Es ist genug” (from Cantata No. 60) provided the theme, but also to Alban Berg, who famously used the same chorale in his final work, the sublime Violin Concerto of 1935, subtitled ‟In memory of an angel.” The first four notes of the chorale melody Bach used have the peculiarity of spanning a tritone or augmented fourth, making the melodic phrase tonally unstable and therefore especially intriguing for later composers. Denisov—one of the leading figures of the Soviet ‟underground avant-garde” in the 1960s and ‛70s—was frequently drawn to religious themes, particularly in his later years. In the present work—originally for viola and piano—Bach’s melody receives a ‟halo” of delicately expressive ‟wrong” notes, filigree-like figurations and, time and time again, some magical chordal progressions played by the celesta. The emotional high point is reached at the end where the chorale melody appears in the solo viola part all in harmonics, while the celesta plays a series of gossamer embellishments. As in the Berg concerto, the angels are seemingly not far away. Double Concerto (1985) The title Double Concerto refers not only to the two soloists, and two orchestras, but also to the form. Within it are two concertos, one for each soloist. Both use similar harmonic material, but differ in context and mood. There are ten sections: 1. introduction 2. piano concerto 3. piano cadenza 4. episode and transition 5. percussion concerto 6. percussion cadenza 7. development (weaving all previous sections) 8. double cadenza 9. simultaneous recapitulation (sections 2 and 5) 10. finale Double Concerto was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in November 1987, with John Harbison conducting. The soloists, to whom the work was originally dedicated, were Daniel Druckman, and Alan Feinberg, who subsequently performed it with the American Composers Orchestra in New York.